Apple's BusinessAppStore

With the launch of the iPad, Apple will have three content based online stores. These are:

- iTunes
- AppStore
- iBookstore

What I'm wondering today is whether they need a fourth store dedicated for Business? What I mean by that is that could be potentially hundreds of thousands of business apps that companies might want to deliver internally but not make available to the world at large.

For example, what if I wanted to develop a front end dashboard application for my EIS? As I've already stated in a previous post we are being pressured to deliver pdf reports to our CFO's iPhone which breaks our Warehouse Security model. The potential could be enormous but then so would be the challenges.

For a start - how would Apple charge for a BusinessAppStore. Currently they take 30% of the revenue from all paid iPhone Apps. Security would also be an issue to, of course. But I think the idea has legs.

Just out of interest I noted the other day that there was a SAP Business Objects App for the iPhone so it's obvious that not only Game Developers see interest in Apples devices in a business context.

Expand this concept wider and hook it into Apple's cloud platform, MobileMe, and we really could see something of interest.